Hushtap

The idea

It started in winter 2024. I'd been getting into electronics and wanted to combine hardware with the iOS development skills I already had. The concept was simple: a physical box that blocks distracting apps on your phone when you tap it.

The first prototype was a cardboard box with an Arduino, an NFC emitter, and an LED ring inside. You'd bring your phone close, the NFC would trigger the companion app to block your chosen apps, and the LEDs would light up. It was rough, but it worked. That was enough to keep going.

Building it for real

Over the next month, I taught myself PCB design and levelled up the hardware. Bluetooth via ESP32, custom PCBs, speakers, better LEDs. I bought a 3D printer and designed a compact enclosure. Eventually I ordered a resin-printed case and even had a metal version machined.

Meanwhile, my co-founder Charlotte built a clean companion app. We genuinely believed we had something special.

San Francisco

We believed in it enough to book flights to San Francisco. We registered a Delaware C-Corp and set out to raise funding.

We didn't find investors, but we found something better. A group of experienced people who helped us rethink everything. They pointed out that hardware doesn't scale fast and we hadn't validated demand. After many long conversations, we scrapped the hardware entirely.

The pivot

Hushtap became a digital product, a screen time app that actually worked. When you blocked your distracting apps, you couldn't undo it unless you sat through 15 ads. There was also a social twist: you could ambush-block your friends using in-app currency. They'd either ride out the block or watch ads to escape.

What happened

I poured everything into Hushtap. Late nights, early flights, real money, real belief. The app didn't take off the way I hoped, and it's still sitting on the App Store without either of us actively behind it.

But San Francisco changed everything. The people I met, the conversations I had, the way I learned to think about building products. None of that would have happened if I'd stayed home. Hushtap didn't become a company, but it made me into someone who could build the next thing. And the next thing after that.

I was 18.